Editorial

The 16th volume of ZfVP is also the first volume in which the journal officially bears the subtitle German Journal of Comparative Politics, which is appropriate to the journal’s content. It is also the first volume that is only available online. With this change, ZfVP takes into account the changing reading behavior and publication strategies of the publisher. Due to the open access regulation by Project DEAL, numerous contributions are available worldwide and free of charge to a wide circle of interested parties. In addition to these innovations, the year was again very productive. Compared to the previous year, the number of downloads has fortunately continued to increase significantly! In total, ZfVP was at 131,310 downloads in 2022, an increase of over 30% compared to the previous year (2021: 100,749). The number of academic articles published in 2022 was 27. In addition to eight book reviews, a literature review on current research on populism and right-wing radicalism by Anna-Sophie Heinze (1/22), a literature review on the state of protest and movement research by Manès Weisskircher (3/22), and an essay by Helmut Klages dealing with the speed of transformation processes using China as an example (1/22) were also published. In addition, the article “Studying Politics at the Local Level in Germany: A Tale

of Missing Data" by Klaudia Wegschaider, Martin Gross and Sophia Schmid (4/22) was published as a Research Note this year (issue 4/22).
In their laudation for the Gero Erdmann Prize for Comparative Area Research 2020 (1/22), Hans-Joachim Lauth, Susanne Pickel, and Thomas Richter pay tribute to the prize winner Tim Glawion, who was honored for his study "The Security Arena in Africa: local order-making in the Central African Republic, Somaliland, and South Sudan" (Cambridge University Press 2020). To the delight of the editorial staff, a ZfVP contribution was awarded the prestigious "Prize of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for Social Science Essays" in 2022. For their study "Die Migrationspolitik der deutschen Länder-Eine mehrdimensionale Analyse" (1/21), Daniel Meyer, Jonas Philipp and Georg Wenzelburger were pleased to receive the second prize (endowed with 1000 C). We congratulate the prize winners and hope that more prizewinning essays will follow in the future.
Furthermore, two obituaries have been published on two German political scientists who have had a great impact not only on comparative politics, but on our entire discipline in Germany-but also internationally. In issue 1/22, Wolfgang Merkel devoted himself to the work of Klaus von Beyme (1934-2021 and his influence on German political science, and in issue 3/22, Roland Czada and Manfred G. Schmidt dealt with the life's work of Gerhard Lehmbruch (1928Lehmbruch ( -2022. In 2022, ZfVP has again published three special issues. In issue 2/22, the Special Section on "Dysfunctional Democracy(ies): Characteristics, Causes and Consequences," edited by Toralf Stark, Norma Osterberg-Kaufmann, and Susanne Pickel. Both the detailed introduction and the four contributions included in the issue address different aspects of the topic of dysfunctional democracies, thus adding a new perspective to the debate on the regressions of democratic regimes.
The Special Issue (Issue 3/22) entitled "Majority versus Proportionality? Trajectories of Electoral Reform in the Mediterranean since the 1990s" was edited by guest editors Thomas Krumm and Marta Regalia. For this special issue on electoral reform in the Mediterranean, both consolidated democracies and moderate authoritarian systems were selected. It analyzes the reforms from the point of view of how they deal with the dilemma between improving governability through majoritarian instruments and increasing the proportionality of representation.
This issue (4/22) contains the Special Issue "Democratic Health in the Corona Pandemic," edited by Marianne Kneuer and Stefan Wurster. The special issue with six contributions is devoted to differentiated analyses of the impact of the Corona crisis management on democratic structures, processes and principles in various countries and regimes.
Additional special issues are planned for the next two years, including "Democracy and Opposition in Turkey" (edited by Ayhan Bilgin and Armagan Öztürk), "State fragility. Multi-perspective approaches to a complex phenomenon" (edited by Theresa Paola Stawski, Jörn Grävingholt, and Hans-Joachim Lauth), and "Rule of Law and Rechtsstaat under Pressure" (edited by Marta Bucholc, Nicolas Hayoz, and Hans-Joachim Lauth).
We can congratulate our long-time colleague Stephan Bröchler on assuming the office of State Election Commissioner of Berlin. Unfortunately, the assumption of this responsible task means that he will no longer be able to continue the planning and K coordinating of our book and literature reviews, which he did with great dedication for many years. We can welcome Christoph Mohamad-Klotzbach as a new member of the editorial team, who already brings a lot of experience for this task due to his many years of work in the editorial assistance.
ZfVP sees itself as a central scholarly forum for outstanding research achievements in comparative politics and represents the entire range of comparative research. As an internationally respected journal with high quality standards, we welcome the submission of innovative research results from the field of comparative politics. Conceptual, methodological and empirical studies from all research fields of the political science sub-discipline can be submitted. You can send us your manuscript via the Editorial Manager: https://www.editorialmanager.com/zfvp/ default.aspx.
If you are interested in submitting reviews, research notes, commentaries, literature as well as conference reports or would like to plan a special issue with us, please feel free to contact us. For questions and suggestions we can be reached at any time at zfvp@uni-wuerzburg.de. For more information on ZfVP, please visit: https://www.springer.com/journal/12286.
We would like to thank all authors and reviewers for their cooperation this year. Especially, we would like to thank all participating scholars for their insightful reviews. Through their commitment, they have contributed significantly to the high quality of the published articles. As always, we would also like to express our gratitude to our publisher Springer VS for the good and successful cooperation, especially Marina Litterer and Andreas Vogel. In addition, we would like to thank Jessica Fäcks for the good cooperation in the past years, whom we wish all the best for her future career.
Furthermore, we would also like to thank Jansen Harris, who has provided us with reliable and high-quality support in the language correction of the English manuscripts over the years, as well as our student assistant Franziska Kleemann for her support in the context of editorial assistance.
Des Weiteren möchten wir ebenfalls Jansen Harris danken, der uns bei der Sprachkorrektur der englischen Manuskripte im Laufe der Jahre zuverlässig und qualitativ hochwertig unterstützt hat sowie unserer studentischen Hilfskraft Franziska Kleemann für die Unterstützung im Rahmen der Redaktionsassistenz. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4. 0/.